


the veyshnoria case

by bluebeholder



Series: the accidental epic [26]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Auror Adventures, Gen, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-13
Updated: 2017-09-13
Packaged: 2018-12-27 16:21:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12084747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebeholder/pseuds/bluebeholder
Summary: 1929: James McGuinness, American Auror, is taking on his final case as a liaison to the Veshynorian Ministry of Magic before his retirement.He expects nostalgia and farewells. He didnotexpect werewolves.





	the veyshnoria case

**Author's Note:**

  * For [adrift_me](https://archiveofourown.org/users/adrift_me/gifts).



> Toffy has been a SAINT in helping me get my story straight with this. Hence the fact that things actually make sense. Thank you so much, darling. <3

“Why,” James mutters, “do dark wizards perpetually insist on setting up like nasty creatures out of fairy tales?”

Yuliya laughs. “Tales have to come from somewhere,” she says lightly. She’s a pretty young woman of about twenty-two, just stepping into her shoes as an Auror in the Veshnoryian Ministry of Magic. She’s traveled with him from the capital at Lida—the wizards’ buildings hidden from Muggle eyes, of course; the Muggles don’t really know that Veyshnoria exists—because this rural town has become the haunt of a particularly nasty dark wizard with a penchant for setting wolves at people. It’s been going on a year now, and only recently did the wizards in town decide that calling in Aurors was the right thing.

“I just feel like we should be doing better, in this modern age,” James says, rolling his eyes. “I mean, really. The world would be a better place if we just didn’t have dark wizards.”

“It would,” she agrees. “But we do, so we’d better go and fight him.”

She makes it sound so _easy_.

God, he wishes he were her age again.

They stroll up the road into the town, arm in arm. Anyone who doesn’t know them will just see an odd couple—a man in his mid-forties, a twenty-year old girl—walking together. The town isn’t overtly held by the wizard. He’s somewhere here, generally making a nuisance of himself and unleashing wolves on unsuspecting people. But the streets are still open, and people are going about their business.

Veyshnoria is a bastion of the old wizarding world: a country that hasn’t bowed to the whims of Muggle border-drawing. Its borders haven’t changed, even as all the others have, which is impressively rare. Tension is mounting, though. Wizards in this part of the world are some of the loudest voices calling for the Statute of Secrecy to be upheld. The Muggle government is notorious, even among wizards, for getting people…lost. All it will take is one misstep and Veyshnoria will be revealed, which would have a domino effect for everyone else in the wizarding world. So wizards here work in factories and fields, participating in the Muggle world and upholding the Statute of Secrecy in ways that no other country even bothers to consider. That’s why James was sent here—to be an American eye for MACUSA in a time of impending crisis.

They go looking for coffee and for rumors. There’s a tiny little café, which serves absolutely black coffee that makes James’ head spin with sudden energy. Yuliya does most of the talking with the lady proprietor, since she’s far better at fishing for information in idle conversation than he is and also she’s actually fluent in the language. James gets to sit back, look attractive, and wait to blow something up. He also has to periodically clean steam off his glasses, because the coffee is rather hot.

It’s rather a nice change from working with American partners, with whom he’s always got to be the face of the group. The unfortunate thing is that he’s gotten very good at flirting with women, which is generally called “leading on” and is not particularly kind when one isn’t planning to go out with that woman later. Yuliya does not come with this problem: she’s got a nice boyfriend back in Lida, and doesn’t bother to try to flirt with James.

“There’s no one in town it could possibly be,” Yuliya informs James, when the woman has gone away to look after a couple of other customers. “Apparently the wolves only ever come in from the forest, and a couple of men tracked them until they were lost.”

“That’s not a surprise,” James says. They have to speak quietly, and in English: they don’t need anyone, not even wizards who might be listening, to know that they’re Aurors. “There are only three wizarding families in this town. I think they’d know if their neighbor was keeping wolves for pets.”

“True,” Yuliya says thoughtfully. “When shall we go?”

James looks at his watch. “I think evening,” he says. “We’ll get there about the time he releases the wolves, and we’ll get the cover of darkness so we don’t have to Obliviate _too_ many people.”

So they spend the day idling in the town. It’s a simple enough matter to drape themselves in charms that will make Muggle eyes slide right over them and notice nothing amiss. To Aurors of skill—like James and Yuliya—it’s a simple enough matter, but not one feasible for great numbers of wizards.

They sit in a small park for a while, doing their best to ignore a poster of the Muggle leader looking at them in stern benevolence from the wall of a public building. Its eyes, sharp and fierce even in paper and ink, leave James’ hair standing on end.

“You’re going away, aren’t you?” Yuliya asks, glancing sideways at him.

“What gave you that impression?”

“You started organizing your office and it isn’t a mess anymore,” she says frankly.

James laughs. “Nothing gets past you.”

“Why are you leaving?”

He puts his hands in his pockets and slouches a little, trying to get comfortable and failing. “It’s time,” he says. “I’ve been an Auror for more than twenty years. Most retire at twenty…I think it’s time for me to go.”

Yuliya nods. “I understand,” she says softly. “I only thought you…”

“I thought so too,” James says. He thinks about his career—about Killing Curses, and dark wizards, and lost friends—and shakes it off to think instead about the lone bird singing somewhere nearby.

The sun does its best to banish the chill breeze, but it doesn’t quite succeed. The breeze ripples through the grass, whispers in the trees, blows Yuliya’s hair out of place. James polishes his glasses, a nervous habit he’s never been able to abandon.

Finally, Yuliya says, “Since you’re going away, I have a question.”

“Ask away.”

“…don’t hex me, promise?”

James looks askance at her. “I promise?”

She studies him. “I went through your photograph album once,” she says. “A while ago, when you first came to Veyshnoria.”

“Oh?” James laughs. He pushes his glasses back to the bridge of his nose. “Do tell. Which of my scandalous photographs are you interested in?”

Yuliya smiles at him, rolling her eyes. “There’s nothing scandalous in there and you know it!”

“Nothing that you saw.”

“I was only wondering—were you with a man, in some of those photographs?”

“I’ve had lots of friends, you know. I’m not always a hermit.”

“No. Romantically, I mean.”

James pauses. He hadn’t taken many pictures with other men that were romantic in nature. Of course he’s had flings before, gone out and flirted wildly and maybe some other things. There might be a photo with Theseus Scamander. They’d had a brief and cheerful affair, and still write letters now and again—but Theseus really isn’t the type to sit still long enough for a photograph. Which means… “How far back did you _look_?”

“I flipped through the whole thing,” Yuliya says unabashedly. She tilts her head back, looking pert.

“I see why they picked me to mentor you,” James says. He sighs and takes off his glasses, polishing them with a handkerchief. “You’re a little hellion.”

Yuliya laughs. “James! Who is it?”

“Percival Graves,” James says. He feels a little nostalgic, thinking of Percy. It’s been nearly a decade, now, since the last time he’d seen the man. It was on the eve of Percy’s meteoric rise to power, as James had left the country for his duty as American liaison to the Continent. Of course Percy had technically been overseeing James’ operations, and so they’d at least seen each other’s words on a page, but that hadn’t lasted. The French Ministry of Magic, after a series of violent incidents where James had gone above and beyond his duty to assist, had poached him from MACUSA to work as a part of their Auror Office.

Even though James had eventually returned to MACUSA, he had lost contact with Percy. The closest they’d come was through impersonal reports, and James had assumed that Percy was busy expanding his career and growing more successful, assumptions that had only been confirmed by news from America. In the last three years, James has served exclusively in Veyshnoria, which unfortunately coincided with the incident in New York in 1926. When reports came out of the country that Percival Graves had been replaced by Grindelwald and subsequently rescued and was now injured beyond all belief and then had resigned his position, James had tried to get to America. He hadn’t, and shortly thereafter Percy had run off with Grindelwald’s weapon and been declared an international fugitive. And from there…he’d simply fallen off the map.

“Do you miss him?” Yuliya asks.

“No more than I miss any of my other American friends,” James says. That’s true enough. He’s reminisced often about friends, Auror and civilian, he’d left behind. And he really had left them behind: he doesn’t know where any of them are now.

He could have stayed, or gone on to become the representative of America on the assembly of the International Confederation of Wizards, but political power was always Percy’s strong suit. Percy wanted to be a leader, to shape the world into a better place by bending it to his will. James has always been content to be a follower, turning his skills and abilities into weapons for someone else’s hands. It’s why he’s here now, why Director of Magical Security Abigail Harding had decided to retain James’ position as MACUSA’s eye in Veyshnoria even after Seraphina Picquery was voted out of the presidency and priorities of MACASA’s foreign affairs had changed. He’s good at this. He’s not so good at leading.

And still, here he is with Yuliya, leading her into danger and out again. “You looked happy with him, in those pictures,” she says. “Like I look when I’m with my boyfriend.”

“We were good partners and good friends,” James says.

“Are we good friends?” Yuliya asks, sounding a little timid.

James smiles at her and nudges her with his elbow. “Of course,” he says. “There’s no one else I’d rather have watching my back for this.” She smiles and ducks her head, faintly blushing. James considers his job well done, and hopes that her confidence has been at least a little boosted.

By evening, they judge it’s about time to head out into the woods. They follow the path advised by the woman who’d told them about the search party, into the tangled woods that are like something out of a grim fairy tale. They’re out of Muggle sight, and so light up the trees with Lumos. They don’t talk, walking side by side. James has a hair trigger and it’s served him well; Yuliya is developing one very quickly. If something bursts out at them, they’re ready.

Despite the cracklings and soft sounds of movement around them, nothing does. The path narrows, and narrows, and suddenly they’re going single file on what’s barely a deer trail. Branches scratch at James’ face, nearly knocking off his glasses, and he hears Yuliya make muffled noises of surprise once or twice as she trips over a root in the dark.

And then, quite suddenly, they step out into a clearing. It’s still very dark, but out here they’ve at least got some starlight to see by. Across the open space of tangled brambles and briars is a small, dilapidated hut, looking like it should have fallen in completely long ago. But a candle-light shines out the window. If this isn’t what they’re looking for, James will eat his shoes without sauce.

James points silently and Yuliya nods in understanding. She strikes off toward it, traipsing through the tangled weeds; James moves around to the side, so he can get a better angle when an opponent comes out of the door.

Yuliya calls out in Russian, her voice clear and bright in the silence. James keeps still, alert, knowing that if there are wolves about they may already be stalking and he won’t see them until they’re on top of him and chewing on his face.

The door of the hut creaks open and a man steps out. In the chaotic light—the wands, the candles, the stars—he looks haggard and drawn. James catches a little of what he says—a warning, a request to stay away, but honestly he’s not listening that hard. He’s more preoccupied with the woods around them.

Now Yuliya’s asking questions of the man, rapid-fire, but he’s not answering. He’s just waving his arms, shouting. It takes a moment for James’ brain to kick back into Russian, because he’s never been very good with languages, and when he starts catching up the translation his heart drops through his feet.

“—run! _RUN_!” the man is shouting. “It’s not _wolves_! It’s _me_!”

James turns to Yuliya. “Go! Run! _RUN_!”

She looks at him, visibly confused, and at that moment the edge of the silver moon breaks over the trees. The man screams, unearthly pain in the sound, and buckles over. James doesn’t watch the transformation—he just sprints across the clearing to Yuliya, shoving her behind him—they can’t outrun a werewolf, can’t even try—and how the _hell_ is it a werewolf, who scrambled that report—but there’s no time to think because the man on the ground is _changing_ , teeth and claws and burning eyes—

“There are more!” Yuliya snaps. She turns, swinging her wand in a wide arc. “ _INCENDIO!”_ James feels the heat from her conjured flames, sees the blaze of golden light—and in that blaze, the glowing eyes of two more werewolves. His heart sinks.

They’re back to back now, facing three werewolves that circle them warily. James thinks fast—it’s dark, and they could Apparate, but they’d be just letting the werewolves run free. Better that two trained Aurors be the targets than Muggles who won’t even be able to fight back. Running solves nothing. So they’ll have to attack. If it were one werewolf, it would be fine; if it were two, they might be able to pull something off. But it’s three. Three sides to cover and just two of them.

“Take one and focus fire,” James says calmly. “I’ll handle the others.”

“Right,” Yuliya whispers.

“And you run, if I go down.”

“Not a chance.”

James shakes his head. Stubborn girl’s going to get killed. But they don’t have time to dither. He steps forward and snaps out his wand in a perfect circle. It’s a sharpshooter’s spell, something fine and precise and dangerous. “Sphaera Acidum!”

A green-glowing orb fires from his wand. It strikes one of the werewolves in the flank—James had been aiming for the eye, damn it, but the thing is just too fast—and it howls with pain, rolling and thrashing on the ground as it tries to end the burning of the acid searing through its fur and skin. It’s not the hit that James was hoping for when he fired, but it should keep that werewolf busy long enough for him to deal with the other.

Behind him, he hears Yuliya chain-casting her signature earth-moving spells, designed to shift the earth and force an enemy to move; it’s an effective tactic for herding an enemy into one place. And she’s not a sharpshooter, not yet—she has to get something fast and agile into a position where she can simply fire at leisure.

The other wolf snarls and stalks around, clearly sizing James up. Werewolves are vicious and intelligent, malicious no matter how they were as a human. James tracks the motion, keeping his eyes on it and imagining where it will be moment to moment. When he judges the distance correctly, he braces his wand over his forearm—this one’s got a hell of a kickback—and snaps, “Asmatara!”

A lance of white energy flashes out from his wand, sending him staggering even though he’d tried to prepare. The werewolf is struck full-on in the neck and goes flying, struck by the force of the spell. It hits a tree and goes down hard, and James just sees the beginning of its return to human shape before something slams into _him_.

He has half a second to react, less, even. His wand falls from his hand. James throws out his arm, bracing against the wolf whose slavering jaws are mere inches from his face, scrabbling for his wand with his other hand. He’s not prepared for this—wasn’t ready for a physical fight, and the wolf is huge and strong and James is going to die, it’s going to tear off his _face_ —

A wave of force slams into the wolf and knocks it away from James. Yuliya hurtles up next to him, wand out, another incantation on her lips. He seizes hold of his wand and scrambles up to a sitting position. The wolf is already climbing back to its feet, but a lance of white ends this wolf, too.

Dead silence descends on the clearing.

“Good job,” James says, looking up at Yuliya, breathless. “I thought I told you to run.”

“I wasn’t going to leave a friend behind,” she says, and offers him her hand. He takes it and she hauls him to his feet.

James squeezes her hand. “Thanks,” he says. He looks around. “Did you just…drop a rock on that one’s head?”

“I panicked,” Yuliya says.

“Panic is good sometimes,” James says. “Makes you think.”

Yuliya leans her head on his shoulder. “I was just thinking I didn’t want you to die.”

Carefully, James wipes off his smudged glasses. “It takes more than a werewolf to kill me.”

They search the surrounding area and find no more signs of werewolves. Reports they had said that there were only three wolves, anyway, and no wizards had sustained a bite, so there were no more werewolves in the area unless something had gone horribly wrong. James collects what evidence he can, and then they begin their trip back to Lida.

Debriefing at the Ministry office is easy. James receives hearty congratulations for all his service, and gets told more than once that he’ll be missed. He smiles, and nods, and thinks about the house waiting for him in London.

He packs up his office the next morning. He’s elbows deep in a box full of old paperwork when Yuliya comes in without knocking. “You were going to leave without saying goodbye!” she accuses.

James straightens up. “I was not!”

“You’re _packing_!”

“I was already half done.”

Yuliya swings around the desk and throws her arms around him. “I’m going to miss you,” she says into his shirt.

James wraps his arms around her and holds tight. “I’ll miss you too,” he says, planting a gentle kiss on her hair. “But you’ll be fine without me.”

She sniffles as she steps back, dabbing at her eyes. “Of course I will. But it doesn’t change that I’ll miss you very badly.”

“You’ll probably get my office.”

“No, I think—I think I want a different one,” Yuliya says. She shakes her head. “I don’t want to sit where you were.”

Smiling, James says, “Well, you deserve to be here. Maybe you’ll be a liaison to MACUSA, one of these days!”

Yuliya rolls her eyes. She pulls a piece of paper out of her pocket. “Before I forget…”

James takes the paper. It’s a photograph, of Yuliya and James, laughing on the steps of the Ministry building. “…who took this? I remember the day, but…”

“My boyfriend,” she says. She scuffs the toe of her shoe on the floor. “I wanted you to have something to remember me by. I don’t expect I’ll hear from you much, when you’re gone, but I’d like you to at least know…I was there.”

“Oh,” James says. He pauses and pulls his photograph album back out of an already-packed box, flipping to a clean page. He taps his wand on the photograph, setting it in place and casting a Permanent Sticking Charm on it. “Here you are. I promise, Yuliya, I might not write…but I never will forget you.”

She smiles, nods, and says, “Good luck.” And she turns on her heel to go.

A thought occurs to him. “Yuliya—” James says, before she can open the door, “—just one thing.”

She stops and turns. “Yes?”

“There’s something that’s been bothering me,” he says slowly. “Reports should have said monthly attacks, on the full moon. With things like this that’s the first thing anyone would look for. We didn’t know what we were walking into. We were misled.”

“Accidents happen,” Yuliya says softly.

“Sometimes they aren’t accidents,” James says, willing her to understand.

Yuliya’s eyes widen very slowly. “Oh…”

There’s a rat in the Ministry, James wants to say. There’s someone here who wanted Aurors to become werewolves. There’s someone who wants the Statute of Secrecy broken open, who’ll kill for that to happen. There’s someone who will want you dead because you found them out. And he can’t say any of that, because he’s well aware that walls have ears.

But he thinks that she gets it. She nods again, a little more deeply. “Maybe I’ll take my luck back,” she says. “Keep it for a rainy day.”

“Do that,” James says. “Goodbye, Yuliya.”

She opens the door and is gone into the hall, off to her own career, her own life. James finishes packing his things and departs. The train leaves to carry him back across the continent soon enough, and he can’t afford to miss it.

No, he won’t forget Yuliya, though he may never see her again. He’s going to be a civilian now, once he’s handed in his resignation and received honors for his life of service. James thinks, wryly, that Yuliya is more likely to forget him than he is to forget her. And that’s as it should be. She’s young, and brilliant, and strong, and has her own lifetime of service ahead of her. No one will be able to match her, and James couldn’t be prouder.

James waits on the platform for the train, and thinks about his own future. He doesn’t know where he’ll go yet, but it somehow doesn’t matter. The weight of a war is off his shoulders, suddenly. His life is his. He’s free.

**Author's Note:**

> [Veyshnoria in the real world is the opposing force in military drills in Belarus](http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-41107540). This is a fairly normal thing to have (a fictitious opposition). The only thing about it is that the name and the idea of it have gotten out and rather taken on a life of their own. [There’s a satirical “official” Twitter account](https://twitter.com/veyshnoria) and [it has a Wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veyshnoria). Obviously I’m only putting a spin on this, and didn’t actually create the concept of Veyshnoria to begin with. Still, I couldn’t resist basing a whole wizarding country on this…and getting to talk about the implications of this in terms of the real-world happenings around it. Again: Toffy was INVALUABLE in helping me with this, so thank you again, darling! 
> 
> With regard to the Statute of Secrecy in Russia: why would Russia let one of the greatest threats to the Statute of Secrecy remain in their country, if they’re so dedicated to upholding the ISS? The answer is…complicated. And I promise to explore all this at a later date; it’s not really the point of this fic. Unfortunately. I’m out of space and time here…


End file.
